It didn't make any sense. Why was he doing this to me? If he was telling the truth, then why would he even tell me in the first place?
                          
            "Explain," I demanded coldly.
                          
            Ethan nodded eagerly. I watched him carefully as he took a deep breath and spoke. "I'm bipolar," he said in a steady voice that didn't match his jittery tendencies. "I was diagnosed with the disorder around three years ago. I kept telling the doctor and my parents that I wasn't - that I was fine - but they insisted that I had to take these pills to keep me leveled out. I was twenty one at the time, going to college, and I didn't want to be held back because of a disorder. So I refused to take the pills."
                          
            "What does this have to do with Lynn's parents?" Jamie asked, crossing her arms over her chest and looking rather intimidating.
                          
            Ethan ignored her and continued to look at me, like my friend wasn't even in the room. "Katie and I were never really close, so this was around the time news got to me that she was kicked off her high school soccer team because of drugs. And that you were the reason she was caught.
                          
            "I was pissed because even if I didn't talk to her that much, Katie deserved to go professional. She was damn good and she wouldn't even get the chance to prove that to the world. I wanted revenge just as much as she did. But then Katie moved away and didn't get the chance to take it. So I took it upon myself to do it for her."
                          
            I clenched my jaw, knowing exactly what happened next. "Stop," I bagged and sat back down on the bed. "Get out of my room."
                          
            "No," Ethan argued. "No, let me explain. I need to tell you what happened!"
                          
            Jamie took a step toward him, but he side stepped around her and stood right in front of me. His brown eyes were wide and flashing with a kind of hysteria that made me fear for my life.
                          
            "You have to understand that I wasn't myself when I did this," he said, his voice finally starting to shake. "I was off my meds and totally out of my fucking mind. It was never my intention to kill your parents, just for your car to burn. I wanted you to suffer like Katie did."
                          
            "What do you mean by my car?"
                          
            "Your car, that was the only thing I wanted to catch fire," he clarified. "It was something big but not all that important; enough to grab your attention. But when I was dousing gasoline on the vehicle, I must have... I don't know, it must have dripped onto the lawn and the next thing I knew the house was in flames."
                          
            I sunk into the bed, trying to get as far away from him as I could. "Please stop."
                          
            "And you know that California has a dry heat, and there was a hell of a lot of oxygen for the fire to pick up energy." He paused and looked at me, probably expecting me to say something. But all I could do was stare into the depths of his brown, cold eyes. "Lynn, you have to know that it was never my intention to kill your parents."
                          
            As he talked, I notice his fingers start to mess with the sleeve of his shirt, pulling up around his wrist just enough to catch a glimpse of a scar.
                          
When I was six years old, I was playing too close to my uncle's motorcycle that he had just gotten home from taking on a little joy ride. The back of my calf hit contact with the muffler and instantly left a burn mark on my skin. To this day, there was a faint scar left in its wake, and it looked a lot like the one I saw on Ethan's wrist.
                          
Was setting fires something he did a lot? The word pyromania came to mind and I wondered if you're even allowed to be a professional referee if you're bipolar and have tendencies to set things on fire.